1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a karaoke apparatus for playing a plurality of requested karaoke music pieces continuously or noninterruptively with a negligibly short interval between successive ones of the requested music pieces.
2. Description of Related Art
In a karaoke apparatus, a music piece can be reserved while a preceding music piece is being played back. The reserved music piece is automatically started after termination of the preceding music piece. Recent karaoke apparatuses are so-called "tone-generator-based karaoke apparatus" in which karaoke performance data drives a tone generator to synthesize or generate a musical tone signal. The tone generator is capable of generating musical tones having a variety of synthetic timbres by setting control parameters, thereby allowing the karaoke apparatus to reproduce or play back karaoke music of any genre by generating suitable musical tones.
However, the number of control parameters for setting the tone generator is so great that it takes about 10 seconds for initializing or setting up the tone generator by transmitting the control parameters to the tone generator before starting karaoke playing. As shown in FIG. 6, in successive playing of plural pieces A and B of karaoke music, the control parameters arranged for the succeeding piece B of karaoke music must be set in the tone generator before starting the music piece B after termination of the preceding music piece A, reesulting in a wait interval of 10 seconds between the two pieces A and B for resetting or initializing the tone generator. Often, this relatively long wait interval has affect of discouraging a karaoke singer's lyrical mood created so far.